Interview

 

For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S.

*** 

In 1969, Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist, warned that the proliferation of biological weapons would be like making “hydrogen bombs available at the supermarket.” Biological weapons confound the Cold War paradigm of deterrence because those releasing them can evade detection and hence retaliation.--Will

***


Interview

Harris' interview on Fox last night was revealing. She was short-tempered, rigid, and hostile. It was easy to see why she has such difficulty holding on to personnel. Some of this may be exaggerated by the emptiness of her political history and the goofy, far-left positions she has adopted in the past; she starts all political discussions on her heels. But this was a fragile, brittle candidate who might be no more attractive personally than Trump himself.

After, Baer discussed the backstory of the interview. Harris was 15 minutes late for the interview. They knew Baer had a deadline where the interview would be aired minutes afterward and they knew the delay would disrupt Baer and his broadcast.

Nothing they do is honest or straightforward.

Anti-Americanism

The average student accepted at Hillsdale College had a 3.95 GPA in high school.

***

Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, is working on a law that aims to ban so-called child-free ideology which it sees as harmful to traditional values.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, announced recently that fines for “propaganda of childlessness” will amount to up to 400,000 rubles ($4,300; €3,879) for individuals and up to 5 million rubles for companies.

***

Anti-Americanism

In this time of hostility to America and its creation as the country itself struggles with the significance of Columbus Day, here is an event that fits right in.

This is culled from several sources, much Politico, and is an amazing story.

The California Coastal Commission rejected SpaceX’s request to make 50 more rocket launches in Santa Barbara County.

The primary uses of these rockets are to deliver the company’s Starlink satellites, which provide commercial internet and telecommunications, as well as for military missions.

Despite bipartisan support from the state and backing of the U.S. Air Force, six commissioners voted against additional launches, clearly citing Musk’s public statements on politics. That is, a group of administrators--50% unelected-- limited the opportunity of a citizen because of his personal beliefs.

The Coastal Commission, known for its defense of public access to the state’s 840-mile coastline, has been sparring with the Air Force’s Space Force branch since May 2023, when DOD asked to increase SpaceX’s satellite launches from Vandenberg from six to 36 per year.

Things came to a head in August when commissioners unloaded on DOD for resisting their recommendations for reducing the impacts of the launches — which disturb wildlife like threatened snowy plovers as well as people, who often have to evacuate nearby Jalama Beach.

The commission ultimately approved the 36-launch plan at the meeting, on the condition that Space Force undertake seven measures to improve environmental protection and coastal access. But military officials didn’t commit to following them during the hearing, drawing fiery criticism from commissioners.

“Space Force came here and intentionally disrespected us,” Bochco said at the August meeting.

The two sides seemed to reach a detente heading into Thursday’s meeting after the Air Force, which oversees Space Force, agreed in September to meet the commission’s seven conditions, including reducing the sonic booms and increased wildlife monitoring.

A bipartisan group of state and federal lawmakers had also weighed in before the hearing in favor of the application, arguing that California should take advantage of DOD’s embrace of the commercial space industry.

But the goodwill evaporated after commissioners raised concerns about Musk’s political rhetoric, slammed the company’s labor record and questioned DOD’s contention that the launches should benefit from military permitting exemptions even if military payloads aren’t being carried.

“I really appreciate the work of the Space Force,” said Commission Chair Caryl Hart. “But here we’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and he’s managed a company in a way that was just described by Commissioner Newsom that I find to be very disturbing.”

Proudly rejecting evenhandedness, including a citizen's personal opinions in decisions of public policy, factoring privately held personal beliefs into government decisions--these are more than self-inflicted socio-political wounds, they defy basic elemental principles inherent in the nation's founding.

Plagiarism

Why should we expect the government to do a good job of picking winners and losers or to allocate scarce resources better than the market? If the government intervenes in markets, how will it avoid mission creep, cronyism, and corruption?--Strain

***

Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million.

***

Contrary to the prediction of underperformance, Trump judges outperform other judges, with the very top rankings of judges predominantly filled by Trump judges.
From a new paper by Stephen J. Choi and Mitu Gulati

***

Plagiarism

Plagiarism will cost a teacher his tenure. It will get a student expelled.

Christopher Rufo has an article exposing plagiarism in Kamala Harris' book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.

"At the beginning of Harris’s political career, in the run-up to her campaign to serve as California’s attorney general, she and co-author Joan O’C Hamilton published a small volume, entitled Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer. The book helped to establish her credibility on criminal justice issues.

However, according to Stefan Weber, a famed Austrian “plagiarism hunter” who has taken down politicians in the German-speaking world, Harris’s book contains more than a dozen “vicious plagiarism fragments.” Some of the passages he highlighted appear to contain minor transgressions—reproducing small sections of text; insufficient paraphrasing—but others seem to reflect more serious infractions, similar in severity to those found in Harvard president Claudine Gay’s doctoral thesis. (Harris did not respond to a request for comment.)

***

Taken in total, there is certainly a breach of standards here. Harris and her co-author duplicated long passages nearly verbatim without proper citation and without quotation marks, which is the textbook definition of plagiarism. They not only lifted material from sources without proper attribution, but in at least one case, relied on a low-quality source, which potentially undermined the accuracy of their conclusion."--Rufo Substack

But it may be that the press will not allow this to become national news.

"Throughout Monday, Rufo published additional excerpts from Smart on Crime that he says prove Harris plagiarized, and he criticized legacy media outlets such as the New York Times for “refus[ing]” to cover the reports."---Wash. Examiner

But plagiarism will cost a teacher his tenure. It will get a student expelled.

Gender Rising

The NHS in Northern Ireland is the worst in the UK. During the quarter April/June 2021, over 349,000 people were waiting for a first appointment, 53 percent for over a year, an increase of 39,000 for the same period in 2020. Adjusted for population size, waiting lists in Northern Ireland are 100 times greater than those in England, a country 50 times its size

***

[T]echnological innovation is essential for growth to persist in the long run. But innovation requires detailed knowledge of production processes and what can make production more efficient. Any society that frowns upon hard work will be unlikely to have a robust class of innovators. Any society that disparages finance will be unlikely to have a thriving entrepreneurial class or significant investment in capital.--Koyama and Rubin

***

Gender Rising

From January 2019 to December 2023, 13,994 minor patients received gender-transition treatments, with 5,747 undergoing sex-change surgeries and 8,579 getting hormones and puberty blockers, according to Do No Harm's database. (from Don)

Historically, the diagnosis of mixed gender was made in about 1 in 30,000 births. That diagnosis was anatomic at birth with mixed genitalia.

Androgen insensitivity (usually diagnosed at puberty) is a bit different.

Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome affects 2 to 5 per 100,000 people who are genetically male. Partial androgen insensitivity is thought to be at least as common as complete androgen insensitivity. Mild androgen insensitivity is much less common. In androgen insensitivity, male hormones and anatomy are normal but the cells do not recognize androgen stimulation and do not develop maleness. This, like the adrenogenital syndrome, results in a true dichotomy between the genetic and phenotypic.

The model Hanne Gaby Odiele in 2015.

The other cause of sexual ambiguity is the adrenogenital syndrome, an acquired increase of steroids that causes changes in physical appearance. It can occur at any age. Think of the famous track and field athletes, the Press sisters.
Both were genetic females who developed benign adrenal gland tumors that produced cortisone and, downstream, testosterone, which masculinized them. Although easily treatable, the swell Russians took advantage of the poor girls' medical problems and lhad them compete in women's track and field. Tamara Press was a world champion for years.

1 in 30,000 is 0.00003333333. If there were 20,0000,000 births during that five-year period, there should have been about 666 sexually ambiguous infants born. If true, where did 13,000 surgical candidates come from?

UBI

TD Bank pled guilty to money laundering.


***

Death by Lightning has wrapped filming. The upcoming Netflix historical drama, created by Mike Makowsky, is based on the Candace Millard novel Destiny of the Republic and follows the events leading up to the assassination of President James A. Garfield by Charles J. Guiteau. The show is executive produced by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the duo behind multiple hit literary adaptations, including HBO's Game of Thrones and co-creating Netflix's 3 Body Problem with Alexander Woo.


***


UBI

Universal basic income (UBI) is a notion that would provide federal cash for everyone, no strings attached. An annual payout to every citizen--age limits to be determined--to guarantee the basic necessities of life.

Comedian Dave Chappelle, a serious guy, thinks UBI would "save my community almost instantly."

UBI activist Conrad Shaw agrees, "You would effectively get rid of extreme poverty immediately."

He says a UBI will help people "start businesses, fix their homes, or invest in sustainable gardens."

Sustainable gardens.

Sam Altman, the guy behind ChatGPT, helped create a test. His big study gave 1,000 low-income people $1,000 per month for three years—no strings attached. What happened?

Not the great things that were promised. After three years of getting $1,000/month, UBI recipients were actually a little deeper in debt than before.

Why? Because they worked less. Their partners did, too.

Some recipients talked about starting businesses, but few actually tried it. Most who said they did start a business waited until the third year of the study—when their free money was about to end.

Bananas and Anti-matter

Cities with high charter school enrollment have consistently improved achievement for low-income students, according to a new report from the center-left think tank the Progressive Policy Institute. Contrary to choice-skeptical talking points, charter schools breed innovation and push local public schools to improve as well.

***

In the 1950s, men outnumbered women 2:1 in college.
By the 1990s, the ratio was 1:1.
Today the ratio is 4:6 with fewer men than women attending college

***


Bananas and Anti-matter

Reasons to read Quora:

Bananas are high in potassium. Most potassium is 39K39K, but about one atom out of every 1200 is an isotope called Potassium-40, 40K40K.

Potassium-40 is radioactive. Most of the time, it decays by releasing an electron and an antineutrino to produce Calcium-40. Every now and then, it decays by β+ decay, releasing a positron—an antimatter electron—which then goes on to annihilate with the first electron it encounters, producing two high-energy gamma photons.

Thanks to 40K40K, all bananas are radioactive; in fact, there’s a unit of radioactivity called the “banana-equivalent dose.”--Veaux

Other foods rich in potassium (and therefore in 40K) include potatoes, kidney beans, sunflower seeds, and nuts, especially Brazil nuts.

Tobacco contains traces of thorium, polonium and uranium. The process of drying and then smoking the solid matter concentrates those radionuclides further, creating in essence technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material.

One BED is often correlated to 10-7 Sievert (0.1 µSv). The radiation exposure from consuming a banana is approximately 1% of the average daily exposure to radiation, which is 100 banana equivalent doses (BED). A chest CT scan delivers 58,000 BED (5.8 mSv). A lethal dose, which kills a human with a 50% risk within 30 days (LD50/30) of radiation, is approximately 50,000,000 BED (5000 mSv). However, this dose is not cumulative in practice, as the principal radioactive component is excreted to maintain metabolic equilibrium.

The BED is only meant to inform the public about the existence of very low levels of natural radioactivity within a natural food. It is not a formally adopted dose measurement.

Government Priorities

Whenever possible it is better to use private insurance, such as homeowner’s insurance and flood insurance, to protect against loss. One of the functions of insurance is to make losers at least partially whole after the fact, but another is to make risky decisions too expensive to contemplate in the first place.--Cowen

***

At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high-speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high-speed link between Tours and Bordeaux.

***

Teachers make up the largest profession in the Irish Legislature

***

Government Priorities

There is some discussion about the appropriateness and efficiency of the government's efforts in the recent hurricane disaster in the American southeast. Here is a parallel story that may provide some insight on the government's apparent lack of focus.

The government has decided to help expand bandwidth in the country.

There are some caveats.

The Administration has stipulated hiring preferences for “underrepresented” groups, including “aging individuals,” prisoners, racial, religious and ethnic minorities, “Indigenous and Native American persons,” “LGBTQI+ persons,” and “persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”

Just imagine the meetings in Idaho trying to fit applicants into these restrictions.

AI vs Climate

There's a new book out about Jack The Ripper. In a series of astonishing luck, coincidence, and hard work, DNA evidence has pointed to a Jewish Russian immigrant as the killer.

***
 

Damoclean: adjective: Involving imminent danger.
ETYMOLOGY:
After Damocles of Greek legend. Earliest documented use: 1888.
Damocles was a courtier in the court of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse. Damocles, eager to flatter his king, lavished him with excessive praise. Annoyed by the flattery, the king decided to teach Damocles a memorable lesson.
He held a sumptuous banquet in honor of Damocles. Above Damocles’ seat, he placed a gleaming sword suspended by a single horsehair. When Damocles saw the sword hanging over his head, he lost all taste for the lavish feast. Damocles understood that even those in positions of privilege live under constant threat. Interestingly, the word imminent literally means 'hanging over.'

***

Retail sales jobs hovered at around 7.5 percent of employment from 2003 to 2013 but have since fallen to only 5.7 percent of employment, a decline of about 25 percent in just a decade. Put another way – the U.S. economy added 19 million total jobs between 2013 and 2023 but lost 850 thousand retail sales jobs. The decline started well before the pandemic.

***


AI vs Climate

Former Google chief Eric Schmidt favors dropping climate goals to ensure that AI companies will have enough power to drive their AI ambitions. Incidentally, this is happening now at Google, as its greenhouse gas emissions have jumped by 48% since 2019, primarily driven by its data center energy demands. While Schmidt recognizes the climate problem he believes that we shouldn’t let targets shackle AI development as we could use it to solve that problem. Besides, he says that we will not be able to meet the targets we’ve set anyway.

Schmidt said, “We’re not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we’re not organized to do it — and the way to do it is with the ways that we’re talking about now — and yes, the needs in this area will be a problem. But I’d rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it and having the problem, if you see my plan.”

A Very Human Government

 

The federal deficit this year is 1.8 trillion dollars.

***

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday called for the elimination of the Electoral College during a fundraiser in California.

***

A Very Human Government

Government has somehow developed a reputation of being more than an accumulation of its parts. And the venal motives of those parts. This is a cautionary story reported in the WSJ.

The Federal Trade Commission went after Hess CEO John Hess, a shale-fracking pioneer who has lambasted the administration’s energy policies. The message to other execs: Put up and shut up.

Last autumn, after Chevron announced plans to acquire Mr. Hess’s company, Democrats demanded that the FTC intervene. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted the deal “would give Big Oil more fuel to raise gas prices,” never mind that the combined company would constitute a tiny fraction of global oil production.

Nonetheless, the FTC’s three Democratic commissioners contrived a fictitious narrative about Mr. Hess being in league with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. They used this to scapegoat Mr. Hess for rising gasoline prices under Mr. Biden and as justification to bar him from Chevron’s board.  

Very human.

Florida Grid

Hurricane Milton has been downgraded to a Category 4.

***

Don't know much about this but it looks bad.
Some big-name celebrities are quietly paying off victims to avoid being publicly named in lawsuits related to the Diddy sex assault case, according to a lawyer.
Attorney Tony Buzbee — who is representing more than 120 of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ alleged victims — told TMZ that huge stars are about to be sued by his firm and he’s giving them a chance to settle up before the claims hit public court.
Some celebrities have opted to settle, he said.

***

The picture of man as a being who, thanks to his reason, can rise above the values of his civilization, in order to judge it from the outside, or from a higher point of view, is an illusion. All we can ever do is to confront one part with the other parts.--Hayek

***


Florida Grid

Here is an interesting observation by Loyola.

Florida relies on natural gas for 75% of its electricity, more than any other large state. That’s remarkable because of the five largest states, the other four—California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas—all have significant natural-gas reserves, while Florida has none. Yet compared with Florida, residential electricity is 27% more expensive in Pennsylvania, 60% more expensive in New York and 137% more expensive in California. Even pro-energy, GOP-controlled Texas has more expensive electricity than Florida, partly because of its large renewable energy sector, which makes its grid costly and difficult to operate.

Because it has avoided the misguided climate policies of other states, Florida is better positioned to weather the historic energy-scarcity crisis now bearing down on America’s electricity grid. Just as electricity demand is soaring across the country, driven by electric vehicles and artificial-intelligence data centers, a train wreck of federal policy failures is constraining the grid’s ability to meet the new demand.

Poverty

Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000.

***

Fossil fuel production has a lag time.
The increase in fossil energy production on federal lands observed during the Biden administration clearly is the result in substantial part of strong leasing and leasing acreage activity in 2019-2020. Both fell dramatically during the 2021-2023 period.

***

Poverty


From an article in the American Institute for Economic Research:

Poverty has no causes; wealth has causes. No effort, sacrifice, risk-taking, or creativity is required to be mired in poverty. Following the reverse of Nike’s famous mantra suffices to ensure poverty: Just don’t do it. Poverty is simply the condition that humanity finds itself in if too little wealth is created.

Unlike poverty, wealth doesn’t just happen. To escape poverty requires the creation of wealth. Effort must be put forward, sacrifices must be made, risks must be taken, and creativity must be unleashed – all by us humans – if we are to transform any of the atomic and molecular mash-ups given to us by nature into outputs that improve our lives. Adam Smith signaled this reality in the full title of his magnificent 1776 book, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Tax Stats

 

Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two-thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). They are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than they are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada.

***

Musk doing an audit of the government might be worth Trump's election alone.

***

Tax Stats

In 2021, taxpayers filed 153.6 million tax returns, reported earning more than $14.7 trillion in adjusted gross income (AGI), and paid nearly $2.2 trillion in individual income taxes.

The average income tax rate in 2021 was 14.9 percent. The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 25.9 percent average rate, nearly eight times higher than the 3.3 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers.

The top 1 percent’s income share rose from 22.2 percent in 2020 to 26.3 percent in 2021 and its share of federal income taxes paid rose from 42.3 percent to 45.8 percent.

The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.3 percent.

A Government Has Its Way

Former president Donald Trump still resembles the “Bleak House” character about whom Charles Dickens wrote: “When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man, to have so inexhaustible a subject.”--will

***

A Government Has Its Way

Mexico has a lot of problems with the U.S. but its practical importance has no real philosophical reflection. This is from O'Grady in the WSJ.

"Capital has been fleeing the country. On June 1 it cost 16.95 pesos to buy a U.S. dollar. Now it costs 19.7 pesos. The carry trade, which captures the interest-rate spread between the two countries, is one reason the peso has held up during the López Obrador government. But that alone can’t support the currency. Ms. Sheinbaum’s first budget is due Nov. 15 and she will be under pressure from financial markets to bring the 6% budget deficit down to 3% or 3.5%.

Increasing uncertainty about property rights may be her bigger challenge. Last week AMLO effectively expropriated the American-owned Vulcan Materials quarry and port in the state of Quintana Roo by declaring its investment a natural protected area. The Alabama company bought the land in the 1980s and 1990s and built the only deepwater port on the Yucatán Peninsula. It operated for decades without trouble and in full compliance with regulations. It even won recognition for its environmental record.

But then Mr. López Obrador set his sights on the property. He didn’t want to pay the company for its multibillion-dollar operation. So in May 2022 Mexico suspended Vulcan’s permit for the Sac Tun limestone quarry and for the port. That was an indirect expropriation. Now the government has declared the property permanently unusable for the company."

Thumbnail Sketches

"In 1800, 75% of [an American's] working man's expenditures went for food alone. By 1850, that had dropped to 50%. Today it is a little more than 11%. "--WSJ


***

A preview of the coming problem of working with AI when it starts to match or exceed human capability: Doctors were given cases to diagnose, with half getting GPT-4 access to help. The control group got 73% score in diagnostic accuracy (a measure of diagnostic reasoning) & the GPT-4 group 77%. No big difference. But GPT-4 alone got 88%. The doctors didn’t change their opinions when working with AI.


***


Thumbnail Sketches

In this time of war, economic instability, and philosophical foolishness, here is Zycher on our esteemed candidates who have floated to the top:

"Donald Trump is a thoroughly despicable man, a narcissist, and abject liar devoid of dignity and incapable of consistent behavior worthy of the presidency. Even now when a George Costanza-type “opposite” suppression of his instincts would advance his political interests, Trump has opted not to focus on Harris’ policy absurdities and reversals, instead criticizing Harris’ crowd size estimates, ethnic background, and other personal attributes more appropriate for a junior high school lunchroom setting.

…..

Kamala Harris is a supreme lightweight who has never thought about policy issues in a serious way, who does not know how to do so, and whose instincts are profoundly misguided. Anyone who can believe that price controls will improve economic outcomes can believe anything. But in terms of domestic policies, as president she would prove profoundly ineffective, as the likelihood of a GOP takeover of the Senate this year is very high, and the major questions doctrine as decided by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v EPA will impose real limits on regulatory policy as a circumvention of Congress. Moreover, Harris would be a poor bet for reelection in 2028 precisely because of the silliness of her thinking, the perverse results of her policy preferences, and the incoherence of her rhetoric. The comedy potential of a future debate between, say, Senator Tom Cotton and Harris is a harbinger of her reelection prospects."

Sometimes competition and selection leads down blind allwys.

Inequality vs. Difference

The whole connection between work and the output we live on is being lost in many people’s minds. To many, the country somehow has wealth, which we should all share – and “fairly.” The most basic fairness of contributing to the efforts that produced what you want to share escapes them completely.--Sowell

***

Freeman in the WSJ asks if the dockworkers union is price gouging.

***


Inequality vs. Difference

Richman on “the preoccupation with income and wealth inequality:”

"To start with the basics, we are not talking about inequality. We’re talking about income and wealth differences. Substitution of the term inequality is an appeal to emotion, a cashing in on other senses of the word. “You oppose equality? Don’t you believe that ‘all men are created equal’?” That’s demagoguery not argument.

In a market-oriented economy, most income is not distributed. There’s no distribution to describe as equal or unequal, fair or unfair. (What the government does is another story.) As Ludwig von Mises, wrote 102 years ago in Socialism: As Economic and Sociological Analysis, “Under Capitalism incomes emerge as a result of market transactions which are indissolubly linked up with production.” That’s not distribution or allocation."

War/Policy

The Lund focus group voted overwhelmingly for Vance's performance last night.

***

The media may have put another nail in its coffin in last night's debate. The moderators were absurdly insincere and biased.

***

Trump gold sneakers?

***

War/Policy

The Middle East is about to refine our understanding of war as an element of policy.

On August 6, 1945, the Americans attacked the city of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb, the first such attack ever. Interestingly, its anniversary is not well remembered. At least 140,000 people were killed in the initial attack; the lingering effects are myriad.

There are countless topics that can be derived from this event but there is a specific modern American peculiarity whose origins I have always pondered: the reluctance to fight wars seriously. Since the Second World War, the United States has gone out of its way to sanitize combat. It fights wars as a community effort--as part of coalitions or the United Nations--as if there is "nothing personal". They place limits on objectives, they never participate in the time-honored purposes of war--slaves and booty--and often will compensate or rebuild the enemy after the fact. Most significantly, they try to distance their own citizenry from the combat. From a volunteer military to the creepy draft lottery the average citizen is moved as far as possible from the war. Indeed this compartmentalizing of combat seems to dictate policy as the government limits action and objectives to limit domestic impact.

The attempt to isolate foreign war as a domestic policy is, of course, impossible. The American inflation chart follows the war chart point by point. Worse, the people become inured to the violence and destruction, like the gradual therapeutic desensitizing to an allergy. But the worst point is the nation's military purpose and its domestic purpose are allowed to diverge. In the Vietnam War American troops were under a greater threat because several sites of enemy troop operations could not be violated for diplomatic reasons, because the war might expand and become a risk to the citizens at home. No nation should allow its sons to be under fire without being willing to commit completely to their defense and well-being. That is, no nation should allow its sons to be under fire without risk to itself.

War is too terrible to be dabbled in. The soldier is immersed in total war; his society should be too. That the soldier is a volunteer is no excuse. If every action was supported with a war tax, if gasoline was diverted or food sold for the expressed purpose of troop support, if the citizen were made to suffer, to participate in the actions of their military children in some--even symbolic--way there would only be serious efforts undertaken.

War is an active, inevitable evil. Yet it cannot be softened or cleaned up. No politician can tweak it to make it more gentle. It is vicious and lethal. Even in the strange Aztec "Flower Wars" everyone died in the end. The citizens of Hiroshima lived and died this. It may be that their lesson is too hard for us to face.

Some Thoughts

Campaign-finance reports reveal that Republicans overwhelmingly outspend Democrats at every major steakhouse in the city… At the Capital Grille, Republicans have outspent Democrats nearly 13 to 1 so far this election cycle.

***

On the 1st of October, all chickens in Britain must be registered with the state by law. It will be a criminal offense to keep unregistered chickens.

***

Some Thoughts

Is Emhoff really changing America's definition of masculinity?

Politics insincere but omnipresent feigned empathy has placed a burden on the politicians with this incredible storm. An empathy Olympics.

Israel has become America's 'vengeance proxy' in the Middle East. Years of attacks from the Beirut bombing to the Red Sea attacks have been ignored by the Americans and the Americans continue with the Biden policies of 'stop' and 'don't.' Yet the White House called Nasrallah's murder 'a measure of justice.'

How is it possible that a woman who six months ago was a national unknown and has never won a single national vote will likely be the next American president?